Did you hear the one about the strategy consultancy that could not work out a strategy for itself? It might make chief executives being billed $500 an hour for the wisdom of McKinsey & Co or Boston Consulting Group chuckle, but it is not a joke for the industry.

When you had a long holiday did you check your email? Or rather, how many times did you check your email each day? When the FT’s Lucy Kellaway suggested in an advice column that people should stay in touch with the office while vacationing, a significant number of readers – amid the howls of protest – agreed this was now simply the reality of life. A recent study by TeamViewer found that 38 per cent of Americans read work-related emails while on holiday.

But behind the scenes, a growing movement of email refuseniks is gaining ground.

How do you value a share in an estate agency (what is known in the US as a realtor)? Perhaps as a derivative of a leveraged investment in a highly cyclical market – in other words, with extreme caution.

London investors are getting a chance to use their own methods, with the initial public offering of Foxtons, the chain of London estate agents that was bought by BC Partners for £360m in 2007 at the peak of the UK property boom. It later went through a debt restructuring as the market sagged. Read more

Not many people will feel too sorry for Reade Griffith of Polygon Investment Partners but it throws a light on the high, and sometimes hidden, transaction fees attached to the inflated London housing market.

Section 106 agreements, the legal avenue used by Kensington to extract the fee from Mr Griffith and his wife, are usually struck between planning authorities and developers of commercial or residential developments, rather than individuals. Read more

Last month technicians from GCHQ, the UK electronic surveillance agency, stood over journalists from The Guardian newspaper to make sure that they destroyed a computer containing files leaked to them by Edward Snowden, the former contractor to the US National Security Agency. This week the British police abused anti-terror legislation to detain David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian journalist, and seize his files. Coming up next: officials from the NSA and GCHQ bang their heads against a brick wall in frustration at having allowed Mr Snowden to abscond with their secrets. It would be as effective, and legal.

To be chief executive of a multinational tech company, even one whose sales are declining, rarely merits the description “underdog”. Yet this is how Henry Blodget, who heads Business Insider, refers to Marissa Mayer, in her first interview since becoming chief executive of Yahoo a year ago, which features in the all-important September issue of US Vogue. Read more

The admission of wrongdoing by Philip Falcone, pictured left, and his hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners, along with a five-year ban from the securities industry, is a step in the right direction for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The deal with Mr Falcone (documented here) is the first evidence of a tougher policy on serious regulatory breaches by the SEC under Mary Jo White, its new chairman. This actually requires the offenders to admit to something when they settle and pay a fine.

The problem is at least as much for China itself as for the Wall Street banks and financial institutions that have followed the local practice by trying to get themselves some good connections. It speaks to the justified resentment of many Chinese at the way the elite “princeling” class accrues wealth.

Tim Armstrong, chief executive of AOL, has apologised for firing Abel Lenz, creative director at the company’s Patch, in front of 1,000 co-workers.

It comes on the heels of a leaked recording that was published by Business Insider, in which Mr Armstrong is heard dismissing Mr Lenz in strong terms followed by an awkward silence. The recording went viral. Read more

The battle to get Jane Austen’s face on banknotes was seen as a victory for women campaigners. It also triggered a debate that feminists were too focused on trivial issues rather than the more important effort to gain economic parity with men.

However, there have been a series of interesting pieces of research on female work in the post-crash era that are worth reading. Read more

In an interview with Newsweek, Jill Abramson (left), the editor of the New York Times, admitted that she cried when she read a profile in Politico, a Washington news site, that cast doubt on her editorship.

“I cried… I should say it went right off me, but I’m just being honest. I did cry. But by the next morning, I wasn’t completely preoccupied by it anymore. I had my cry and that was that.” Read more

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Welcome. We blog about business and strategy and how and why people who run companies take the decisions that they do. Your comments and criticism are welcome.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

John Gapper is an associate editor and the chief business commentator of the FT.
He has worked for the FT since 1987, covering labour relations, banking and the media. He is co-author, with Nicholas Denton, of 'All That Glitters', an account of the collapse of Barings in 1995.

Andrew Hill is an associate editor and the management editor of the FT. He is a former City editor, financial editor, comment and analysis editor, New York bureau chief, foreign news editor and correspondent in Brussels and Milan.

Emma Jacobs is a features writer for the FT, with a particular focus on Business Life. She explores workplace trends, business culture and entrepreneurship and is one of the paper's leading interviewers.

Adam Jones is editor of Business Life, home to the FT's coverage of management, entrepreneurship and working life.

Lucy Kellaway is an Associate Editor and management columnist of the FT. For the past 15 years her weekly Monday column has poked fun at management fads and jargon and celebrated the ups and downs of office life.

Ravi Mattu is the deputy editor of the FT Weekend Magazine and a former editor of Business Life. He writes about management, technology, entrepreneurship andinnovation.

Michael Skapinker is an assistant editor and editor of the FT’s special reports. A former management editor of the FT, his column on Business and Society appears every Thursday.